News

Ability Beyond Disability Partners with PepsiCo

May 18, 2015

For many years Ability Beyond Disability has been helping to successfully place individuals with disabilities in competitive jobs. Over time it has become apparent that there are many benefits to hiring individuals with disabilities; people with disabilities are more likely to stay with an employer, reducing turnover rates and saving money and their absentee rates are lower compared to your “typical” employee. Rather than continue to work with companies solely when they are looking to fill one position, Ability Beyond Disability is now offering Corporate Consultation services. Essentially, Ability Beyond Disability will be working with a company to identify positions where they can hire individuals with disabilities on a larger scale.

Recently, Ability Beyond Disability has partnered with PepsiCo North America Beverages (NAB) to identify opportunities to actively recruit, hire and retain qualified individuals with disabilities in all areas of their operations. PepsiCo featured the partnership in their internal newsletter PEPline saying, “Building a strong talent base that includes people with disabilities positions us to better connect with all types of consumers, which is definitely a business objective of our Diversity & Inclusion platform,” said Marty Bean, EnAble executive sponsor and vice president, Marketing Equipment, Supply Chain/Operations – NAB. PepsiCo NAB will be piloting the program in two U.S. locations. Activities will include job task analysis, outreach and hiring opportunity identification, human resources policy review and training program development. The initial hiring model and implementation plan will be NAB-specific, but the models could potentially be used within other PepsiCo business units across North America.

To advise on our Corporate Consultation services, Ability Beyond Disability has been working with James Emmett, a national leader in the development of employment services for individuals with disabilities. James was born with a physical disability and is a father to two daughters with developmental disabilities. Drawing from personal, business and educational experience, James trains corporations in outreach efforts to the disability community. He currently serves as the Vice President of Workplace Initiatives for the Poses Family Foundation and is on the leadership team for the OfficeMax “Maxing Out Diversity” Project. James worked on the national initiatives to hire hundreds of people with disabilities at Walgreens distribution centers in South Carolina and Connecticut, Best Buy distribution center in Kentucky and Midway Moving & Storage in Chicago.

“We are very excited to have James on board as we move forward with PepsiCo,” says Carrie O’Connell, Services Director of Connecticut at Ability Beyond Disability. “We are working to identify other companies as potential partners for our Corporate Consultation services as well. We think that this will be an area where Ability Beyond Disability can really grow in the future.”

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